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Benjamin Siegel

Department of History, Harvard University

Learning to Eat in a Capital City


CONSTRUCTING PUBLIC EATINC CULTURE IN DELHI

ABSTRACT

The history of public eating in Delhi demonstrates the sociocultural and economic changes that have significantly reshaped residents' expectations of public spaces and practices. While Delhi's cuisine is widely considered India's haute cuisine, public eating in the capital was inhibited during Mughal and early imperial rule by widespread social conservatism, with food taboos and understandings of appropriate interaction limiting venues to food stalls patronized largely, if not entirely, by working class men. The imperial refashioning of urban life facilitated the city's first formal restaurants, which grew in popularity with the help of American and British soldiers, western tourists and wealthy Indians, Freestanding and hotel restaurants remained elite institutions, though their examples helped reconfigure wider understandings of appropriate social Society
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interaction. Economic and cultural liberalization during the last two decades has allowed for a flourishing contemporary restaurant culture in Delhi, with the restaurant emerging as a primary locus for citizens to display cosmopolitanism and explore the culinary Other. Keywords: Delhi, India, restaurants, eating, food history, public eating, commensality

Introduction Indian haute cuisine, food writer Cbitira Banerji notes, "was born in Delbi and developed to a point of exquisite, almost overblown refinement,"' its traditions of kebabs, biryanis, flatbreads and sweets a testimony to tbe wealtb and culinary sopbistication of its Muslim nobility in tbe eigbteentb and early nineteentb centuries. But wbile tbe Mugbal culinary tradition, witb its lavisb, meat-centered gastronomic celebrations, did indeed reacb its apogee in tbe capital city, Delhi's culture of public eating has long been one of marked conservatism, its reticence to embrace restaurant culture only crumbling in tbe second balf of tbe twentietb century. Tbe constraints of Hindu food taboos and fears over dubious sanitation substantively restricted public eating culture in pre-twentietb century Delbi. Wbile tbe city's Mugblai cuisine grew ever more refined in private havelis [mansions] and among tbe aristocracy, tbe city's laboring classes exhibited widespread anxiety over tbe religious and bygienic uncertainties of eating outside of tbe bome.^ Laboring men did enjoy access to public eating stalls witb limited selections of sweetmeats, kebabs and fried snacks. But tbese pleasures were still arguably transgressive and certainly gender-specific, available primarily to laborers, travelers and soldiers, and otber men away from familial observation.
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As early twentietb century colonial planners sougbt to move tbe public spaces of the city southwards and outside tbe walls of tbe old city, a planned European urban configuration and increased attention to tbe regulation of public practices allowed for the first Western-style restaurants to open in Connaugbt Place, New Delhi's central commercial rotunda. The patronage
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of American Cls stationed in Delbi during tbe Second World War helped establisb tbe restaurant as a site of appropriate and desirable consumption and interaction in tbe minds of wealtby urbanits; tbe resultant elite restaurants of the 1950s spoke to a slowly cbanging set of attitudes towards tbe desirability and appropriateness of public eating. These institutions remained, bowever, "occasion" restaurants, slightly more down-market establishments tban tbe city's celebrated botel restaurants, popular for family outings and dates alike. Botb tbese and tbe botel restaurants sen'ed a relatively interchangeable mix of North Indian, continental and IndoCbinese Food. Tbe social and economic liberalization facilitated by the Indian economic boom of tbe 1990s brougbt to Delbi a burgeoning and diversifying restaurant culture tbat revolutionized tbe culinary expectations of middle class dilliimllahs [Delhiites]. Restaurants increasingly serve as sites For safely exploring "the culinary Other, "^ and public eating has become a primar)' metbod by which the city's denizens can embody botb wealtb and cosmopolitanism. A flourishing restaurant review culture in botb Hindi and English has helped "teach" middle class citizens how to eat in restaurants, while molding tbeir expectations For Western paradigms of eating, service and cleanliness. Delhi's increased comFort witb public eating and its Western models set boundaries for tbe urban Nortb Indian culinary ecumene. This experience, bowever, diFFers significantly From tbe culinary histories of botb Bombay and Calcutta. In tbe first metropolis, port permissiveness, limited class mobility, and wider etbnic intermingling led to tbe rise of a flourishing restaurant culture half a century before Delhi's, a sbiFt typified by tbe city's popular, middle class Irani restaurants.^ Wbile Calcutta's Western restaurant culture was somewbat slower to develop, by the 1930s, the European coffeehouse and restaurant bad tbere become primary institutions of social exchange, supplanting oFFices and tea-stalls as the site For tbe celebrated Bengali tradition o adda [idle chatter].^ Delbi remains unique for its history of culinary conservatism, witb a public restaurant culture ultimately developing througb tbe imposition of European structure to tbe city's planning, a loosening of traditional Food restrictions concomitant with tbe onset oF immigration and burgeoning wealtb, and the modeling of imperial agents, foreign travelers and returning Indians alike. Tbe city's history demonstrates cbanging understandings of appropriate public interaction through the key category of public eating, as
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Delhiites' embrace of restaurant culture helps define new models for Indian cosmopolitanism.

Public Eating in Pre-Modern Delhi


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There is a paucity of historical literature on public eating in pre-modern Delhi, much of which is colored by Babur's famous dismissal of the foods of Hindustan, boasting "no grapes, musk melons or first-rate fruits, no ice or cold water, no good bread or cooked food in the bazaars.""^ Accounts of public life rarely enumerate acts of public eating, suggesting that, while food served ver)' definite religious and nutritive purposes, the act of consuming served a more incidental role, and was not an instrumental category of public life in the Mughal capital. This lacuna was not unique to Delhi: Frank Conlon notes that public dining was limited throughout pre-modern India, with Brahminical notions of purity effectively limiting the role of restaurants and eating places. ''Hindu ideological concerns for commensaiity and purity," he suggests, "contributed to anxiety regarding the provenance and purity of food for consumptionmatters that are not subjects of inherent certainty in plaees of public dining."^ Transgression of these norms was most possible during situations when familial structures were already compromised, or by those for whom the concern of purity might matter less: travelers, laborers and soldiers. Conlon notes that there are some references to eating houses in Sanskrit literature from around the fourth century BCE, and Mughal soldiers helped contribute to a mess cooking culture among highways and near campsites. Public eating, however, was a pleasure reserx'ed for, or alternatively, a transgression only possible for males away from the view of women and children in zenankhanas [women's quarters].^ A not dissimilar concern for hygiene and purity would effectively limit the eating options of early Europeans, before increased trade and the more systematized construction of culinary difference would lead to a rise of a distinet Raj cuisine.^ An understanding of sanitation and health was central to the European experience of colonized lands, and the earliest Western accounts of India demonstrate the gastronomic anxiety that would categorize the continuing European encounter. T h e later establishment o. dak hhavans [resting houses and kitchens] along well-trodden routes would help to provide havens for British soldiers and travelers otherwise wary of their food sources. Franois Bernier, the French physician and explorer whose memoirs detail his twelve-year care of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1655-68), exhibited a very Gallic squeamishness in his experience of Delhi's markets. "In the bazaars," he noted, "there are shops where meat is sold roasted and dressed
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in a variety of ways. But there is no trusting to their dishes, composed, for aught I know, of the flesh of camels, horses, or perhaps oxen which have died of disease, hideed, no food can be considered wholesome which is not dressed at home.""' While street stalls doled out sweetmeats and kebabs of questionable provenance, Delhi's haute cuisine developed in the cities' havelis and in the palace, with rats [aristocrats] and the Mughal nobility cultivating India's most refined gastronomy. The popular image of Delhi's food descends from this luxurious and conspicuous cuisine, enjoyed in private by a ver)' small population of privileged diners: as one account has it: [the] hurra kebab of marinated meat cooked in a tandoor; the seekh kebab of minced meat on a skewer; the sheermal roti, slightly sweet and flavoured with saffron; meat curries o paya [feet] and brains the kind of food that makes men men. Yet the fragrance is of the sweeter spices: mace, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, fennel, cloves, and cardamom, as well as rose water and lieivra, screw pine essence.' ' While the zamindars [landowners] and princes feasted, accounts like Bernier's confirm that single men had access to a limited range of eatingplaces, many of them around Delhi's Parenthewali Gali, still today a popular venue for its eponymous stuffed paranthas. Yet the Mughal penchant for excess resulted in frequent shortage. Bernier later recounted that in Delhi there is no middle state. A man must either be of the highest rank of live miserably My pay is considerable, nor am 1 sparing of money; yet does it often happen that I have not wherewithal to satisfy the cravings of hunger, the bazaars being so ill supplied, and frequently containing nothing but the refuse of the grandees.'^ In the face of scarcity, however, some street stalls grew into the stuff of legend, seemingly patronized more frequently by Muslims, less restricted by food taboo than their Hindu counterparts. One such stall was that of Jani, a famous kebab maker whose marinade of chilies made for a painful shock to unwitting visitors. William Dalrymple recounts a story told by the [Urdu] poet Azad of a visitor to Delhi who hadn't eaten for a whole day He stretched his jaws wide and fell on it [the kebab]. And instantly it was as if bis brains had been blown out of his mouth by gunpowder He leapt back with a howl. [But the Delhiwallah who brought him replied:] "we live here only for this sharp taste."'^ Public eating remained deeply restricted by gender and class sensibilities: while a laborer would readily partake of the sweetmeats, snacks or kebabs
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doled out by Delhi's vendors, the city's nobility would bave few opportunities to partake in tbe same (at least in sight of others), and women living under the purdah system would likely pass their entire lives witbout eating once outside of the home. Formal public dining venues found no place in Mughal Delhi, their potential patronage encumbered by taboo and questions of
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sanitation, and the concept of eating focused primarily around the hearth, Public eating in Delhi was deeply entrenched with the very idea of transgression, a pursuit acceptable while traveling or working, but not an activity for families or polite society It is perhaps unsurprising that the moment of greatest transgression in Delhi's history, the sepoys' revolt of 1857, was accompanied by a triumphant act of public eating, witb the arriving mutineers eager to flaunt authority through lavish public consumption and patronage of tbe city's eating stalls: [Tbe eigbt thousand sepoys who arrived in Delhi] were living in luxur)', drinking a lot of bhang [cannabis], eating the best laddo peras [sweetmeats] and bad stopped doing their own cooking, as for both meals they fed on delicious puri Imchoris [stuffed fried breads] and sweets, and at night slept a peaceful sleep ,,, They took control of Deibi and did what ever tbey wanted: there was no one who we could appeal to,''*''^ Tbe reassertion of imperial control in tbe decades tbat followed changed governmental attitude to tbese public eating places, and as tbe Britisb sought to identify loci of control in a city increasingly thought of as unmanageable, tbey identified public eating venues, witb their congregations of idle males, as a possible site of power. At tbe turn of the last century, British traveler F,H,S, Mereweatber did what generations of Westerners in Delhi would do after him, seeking out "authentic " Indian food from his reluctant guide, 1 had immense difficulty in getting my [servant] to take me to the public kitcben, 1 tried him with dukhankhana [food store], then Ganib logue ke-passe [wbere tbe poor people are] but he solidly denied all knowledge of such a place, tbing or people, till at last I was obliged to invoke the assistance of a spotlessly clad Delhian, who started us on the right track, [We] emerged at tbe Kabulee-gate, witbout which lay the object of my quest, Tbis kitchen had been started some three months; and a daily feed of chuppaties and curry and rice is given to some thousand people, wbo came duly furnisbed witb a proper ticket. It is in tbe bands of the Municipal Committee, and seemed to be fairly well managed, tbe expenses averaging a little over 300 rupees weekly, I arrived there about noon, and tbougb tbe feast is not advertised to begin before two o'clock, yet several

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bundred would be guests were already sitting in tbe compound, awaiting witb sublime oriental patience tbe due distribution of tbe daily dole. Tbere were two kitcbens, one for tbe Hindoos and Mabommedans respectively, and a posse of cbefs were busily preparing for the coming civic banquet. ' ^ Merewetber's discovery sbows an increased effort to control eating sites, as tbe imperial apparatus sougbt to systematize and regulate public practices and spaces. Tbe fundamental character of public eating does not appear to have cbanged by tbe end of tbe nineteentb century, witb sites of public eating starkly limited to single males wbo would find tbemselves in public tborougbfares. Tbe separate kitcbens, bowever, suggests tbat tbe differential approacbes to eating evinced by eacb community bad been found wortby of official notice and accordant response. Most critical to identify in tbe bistory of pre-twentietb centur)' public eating in Delbi is its striated cbaracter If Delbi court food is indeed tbe baute cuisine of India, tbese excesses were limited to tbe nobility, wbo enjoyed Mugblai richness bebind closed doors.''' Polite Delbi families approached public eating witb trepidation and fears of spiritual and sanitr)' contamination, and while men could transgressively indulge in ladoos [sweetmeats], paraihas [stuffed flatbreads] or kebabs, women were ver)' certainly excluded from tbese pleasures. Tbe resultant urban food culture was one of somewbat surreptitious and profane indulgences, of snacks grabbed informally in galis [small alleys] and at stalls, out of view of polite company.

Changing Models in a Planned City Public eating in Delbi would cbange little in tbe early decades of tbe twentietb century, witb anxieties over public consumption, bygiene and transgression strong enougb to ensure a widening gulf between street food culture and bigb cuisine. Cbange would slowly come, bowever, as Delbi's imperial planners sougbt to forward a city, as Jyoti Hosagrabar bas suggested, "about government and power, order and control, [and an] idealized 'modern' life as visualized by its Britisb arcbitects." In tbe New Delbi of Lutyens and Baker (completed 1929), witb its wide boulevards, European-style planning, and colonnaded facades, tbere was to be "no room for tbe bumdrum daily life of ordinary people going about tbeir mundane businesses.""^ Tbe aspects of urban life tbat were neitber bygienic nor romantic were confined to tbe old city: street stalls and vendors would find no place in tbe imperial plan. Tbis increasingly regimented vision for urban space and practice bad broad impact on Delbi's culinar)' landscape. Witb tbeir bebavior increasingly regulated in tbe city's planned spaces, dilliwallahs found an increased

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culture of permissiveness in its more cbaotic old city, and inFormal street food flourisbed. Forced to reckon witb new models of urban living, entrepreneurs slowly began to build the city's First Formal restaurants, witb menus, set meals and established modes oF service Fitting new expectations of salubrious interaction. At the heart of tbis shyly growing restaurant culture was Connaugbt Place (completed 1932), New Delhi's flagship European-style market, a circular plaza with wbitewasbed arcades in two covalent rings, sectioned by radial roads heading north to tbe walled city and south to tbe new city's planned malls and boulevards. A small number of Western-style eateries opened as Connaught Place establisbed itself as tbe new city's central socializing space: beFore tbe market was Finisbed, Wenger's bad opened its pastry shop, which would later evolve into a Full-Fledged restaurant. In 1934, Four years aFter their arrival in Delbi, the Nirula Family opened Connaugbt Place's Hotel India. Witb a liquor license and a Western-style restaurant, the hotel grew suecessFul enough to expand. Five years later, into Nirula's Restaurant, wbicb began to lure well-beeled dilliivallahs and Britisb patrons alike, as mucb For its dancing as its Food. Competition came quickly: in 1940, Kwality opened in Connaugbt Place's Regal Building, oFFering Delbiites their First taste oF ice cream (as opposed to tbe traditional Frozen kulfi). Nirula's and Kwality would later enjoy nationwide successtbe former growing into one of India's best-recognized Fast Food chains, tbe latter into tbe country's leading ice cream distributorbut patronage by the city's wealtby allowed Connaught Place's restaurants only limited success. Tbe sea change would occur only towards tbe end of the Second World War, wben 400,000 US soldiers were stationed in India, a large number of wbom made tbeir way to Burma via tbe capital.'^ Homesickness and open wallets made For a steady clientele for Kwality and Nirula's, tbe Former expanding on their ice cream success to oFfer servicemen snacks, as well.^*^ For tbe city's wealtby, the postwar period made For a drastic refasbioning oF tbe idea oF public eating, and wbile restaurant culture made Few tangible inroads beyond elite Delbi, tbe aspirational image of tbe Western, sit-down restaurant began to percolate throughout tbe city. Tbese new social spaces Found an eager audience in Delbi's wealtby youth, wbo Flocked to Connaugbt Place's restaurants witb tbeir promise oF saFe baven For semi-private dating. Caylord allowed young couples spaces for dim-lit gatherings away from watchful eyes,^' and Wenger's dance Floor provided opportunities for social and romantic aspirationtinged with unsubtle connotations oF Western social begemony. As one Delhi writer recounts of ber adolescence in tbe 1940s: I remember going For tea into Wenger's and sitting at tbe tables by tbe side oF the dance floor to watch tbe Englisb and American

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soldiers dance with the Anglo-Indian girls. We had tea and chocolate pastries, but my heart was fixated at the sight of the dancing couples. I remember romanticizing that I was one of the girls daneingin the arms ofa tall white mustaehioed man, instead of with a girl, as we did during school socials.^^ American and British influences mingled with the city's cultural shifts brought on by the mass migration of Punjabi refugees fleeing the violence of Partition. An influx of wealth and a sense of culinary permissiveness emerged, exemplified by the celebrated Moti Mahal, opened in 1947 in Old Delhi's Daryaganj by Punjabi Sikh Refugees from Lahore. The sit-down restaurantmost famous, perhaps, as the inventor of both butter chicken and tandoori chickenproved popular among Delhi's wealthy, who found new reason to patronize establishments near the old city, often arriving in new cars.2-'' While guidebooks invariably described Moti Mahal as the embodiment of traditional Delhi food,2'' in reality, its offerings were a reinterpreted mix of Punjabi staples, which found equal favor among foreigners as among dilliwallahs. The restaurant was unusually popular among visiting Soviets who, breaking from their efforts to court the nonaligned government, feasted on tandoori chicken.^5 Wealthy Delhiites' early willingness to eat a hybridized mix of North Indian dishes in restaurants differed from Calcutta residents, who, in the nascent years of their restaurant culture, coded local food as inappropriate for restaurant eonsumption.^*^ Delhi's 1950s stalwarts, however, focused their efforts on a mix of North Indian, continental and Chinese dishes. (The Chinese offerings came to Delhi during the 1960s with the opening of the Chinese Room by the Nirula family,^'' who imported an indigenized cuisine from Calcutta, where Cantonese and Hakka immigrants had established a presence throughout the nineteenth century) The standard-bearer in the 1950s, however, was not Moti Mahal, but the Caylord. Founded by Kwality founder Peshori Lai Lamba in partnership with Iqbal Chai, the Caylord set the tone for Delhi's high dining culture in the first decade of independence, serving a mix of North Indian, continental and Chinese food to a mix of wealthy Delhiites and foreign tourists to orchestral strains. The North Indian menu was comparatively limited and heavily earnivorous, with dishes like brain curry which increasingly rarely appears on contemporary Delhi menus.^^ The Chinese menu featured a standard array of Calcutta-style Indo-Chinese food, including "sweet eorn chicken," "sliced fish in tomato sauee," "American chop suey" and "mushroom fuyong." The bulk of the Caylord's offerings were emblematie of dining culture in post-independence Delhi: Indian interpretations and imaginations of continental food, with diners choosing from stuffed grilled chicken, tomato

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omelets, baked asparagus, cream of tomato and French onion soup, Welsh rarebit or sardines on toast, chicken steak and risotto. Beef and pork both comprised a large proportion of the available foods, and the ready availability of both suggest that alongside wealthy locals who were more ready to break food taboo in the name of cosmopolitanism, restaurants like the Gaylord
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catered to a largely foreign clientele. Governmental records suggest the samea 1963 report on the service economy in India during the 1950s noted the comparatively high pay of Delhi's hotel restaurant workers, observing that "Delhi has a larger proportion of hotels and restaurants catering to foreign elients than any other large city in India.^^ These foreign clients would have been just as likely to frequent one of Delhi's posh hotel restaurants, attitudinally and culinarily aligned with the Gaylord. At hotels like the Claridges (built 1955), the Ashok (built 1956) and the Oberoi (built 1965), restaurants touted Indian and continental prix fixe menus, catering to the increasing number of foreign visitors in Delhi, their Indian hosts, and visiting domestic industrialists. O n e 1964 menu from the Ashok details typical hotel eating options, with both Indian and Western options.^" Both meals begin with consomm and end with charlotte russe, but diverge in the middle: the Indian meal includes a selection of largely vegetarian dishes with two lamb options, served in thali [mixed platter] preparation, while the continental meal includes roast capon and ham, French beans tourangelle, potatoes Byron, salads, and an assortment of cold meat. The Ashok's menu seems typical of hotel restaurants at the time, where tipsy pudding and other desserts would be served in lieu of Indian sweets.^' With prohibition effectively curtailing casual drinking until its repeal in the early 1970s, hotel restaurants appear to have been some of the few condoned plaeed for drinking in the city, with contemporary guidebooks suggesting that foreign visitors could quietly order tipples from their hotels.^2 T h e expense and strangeness rendered Delhi's hotel restaurants off-limits for most of the city's citizens. "It is hard to imagine today," journalist Ranjana Sengupta wryly notes, "the awe with which the term 'five star' was regarded in a city cut off from imports and officially wedded to a cult of Gandhian austerity"^"* Yet these restaurants' needs for foreign foodstuffssuch as lobster, caviar, grapefruit and duckwere supplied by a network of Western-oriented distributors: long after the British had eeased the inefficient import of tinned meats and vegetables that served as the backbone of Raj cuisine, smaller operations continued to procure Western eomestibles for the hotel restaurants' needs. The Lai brothers, one major pair of suppliers, offered hoteliers "tinned vegetables, soups, meat, breakfast food, jams, jellies, pickles, fish, custard powder, baking powder, squashes, juices, tomato sauce, fruits, toilet papers & all other allied product."'''* A competing supplier boasted its diverse selection of cornflour blancmange
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raspberry, pineapple, strawberry and vanilla,^^ Not surprisingly, botb importers bad their offices on Connaught Place's northernmost spoke, Qutab Roadat the edge of Old Delhi's markets, but far more convenient to tbe botel restaurants of central and soutb Delbi, Less well-heeled visitors to Delhidordestic travelers arriving in tbe capital for business, usually witbout familiescould increasingly avail tbemselves of mid-range botel restaurants, less ostentatious tban the city's, institutional dining rooms, but more comfortable tban a traditional traveler's dharamsala [pilgrim's lodge], Tbese casual restaurants catered to a diverse array of travelers. By 1964, one domestic travel guide counted tbirty-five mid-range hotels with restaurants; among those included were several vegetarian venues, one Bengali establisbment, and one Cujarati restaurant,-^^ These ethnic eateries, bowever, seem to bave been aimed at a traveling clientele, ratber than a curious local population, Cbange also came, gradually, to Delbi's street food culture. By independence in 1947, upper-class Delbiites could increasingly indulge in fried and spicy snacks from the old city's stalls, albeit surreptitiously, and witb a lingering knowledge of transgression. As food writer Madbur Jaffrey recalls of ber cbildbood in 1940s Delbi: My motber's family, still living in the narrow lanes of [the old city], tended to eat very spicy foods. My father's side of the family, which bad moved in tbe 1920s into a more westernized section of town built outside the Old City walls, ate a calmer, less fiery cuisine. As a cbild, I loved botb styles of food but because my father and bis very "proper" ways smacked of Establisbment, I would often sneak off witb my motber to eat spicy bazaar food served on leaves of dubious cleanliness in tbe narrow lanes of Old Delhi,^^ In the decades that followed, the sense of transgression tbat accompanied street eating lessened even furtber. By tbe 1950s, casual dining spots bad emerged in tbe areas around Delhi University, metal and ceramic cutlery bad replaced leafs at street stalls, and tbe emergence of soft drinks began to create spaces of public conviviality for a wider population than had the traditional chaiwallah [tea vendor] stands,-^** By the mid-1960s, Delhi's public eateries bad greatly expanded in scope and offerings, even as they remained fundamentally elite institutions: wbile tbe botel restaurants commanded wbite table clotbs and princely bills, even tbe more down-market offerings near Connaugbt Place made for relatively expensive offerings, Tbe changing ethos of public eating in Delbi, bowever, meant tbat even tbe flourisbing street food culture embraced increasingly Western accoutrements, Tbe more regimented and sbowy sit-down restaurant culture in Delhi's planned spaces made for a broad expansion of Delbi's culinary' landscape
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tbrougbout tbe decade: diners converged at newcomers like Gufa, Kbyber, Vig, and tbe Sindbi restaurant, and tbe opening of Connaugbt Place's Mikado, witb its "Sunday Swing Session," introduced competition to Nirula's Chinese Room.-^^ Tbe Nirula family, wbo first introduced espresso in 1960s Delbi, opened up tbe Hungarian-tbemed La Bobeme sbortly tbereafter. Tbe 1970s saw a limited diversification and expansion of botel restaurants tbrougbout tbe city, as domestic and foreign tourism grew and India's economy slowly liberalized. Tbe Woodlands restaurant opened up in tbe Lodbi Hotel in tbe early 1970s, offering Soutb Indian snacks and meals'"^ alongside Dasaprakasb at tbe Ambassador Hotel, offering a similar selection of dosa [rice and lentil pancake], idli [steamed rice cake], vada [fried rice cake] and appam [bopper]. By tbe middle of tbe decade, a new Tibetan-style restaurant bad opened at tbe Fonesca Hotel, and a Cbinese and Japanese restaurant, Fujiya, bad begun to cater to tbe capital's embassies.'" Yet formal restaurants remained tbe realm of tbe wealtby, tbe etbos best expressed tbrougb tbe Gaylord's long-running motto, "Gaylord treats you like a Lord.'"*^ Food remained a secondary' concern in tbese restaurants, witb an empbasis not on cuisine but sociabilityand increasingly, a cabaret culture. Delbi's dinner-and-a-sbow venues comprised a mix of Western and Indian performances: for well-beeled Delbiites, tbey were important sites for tbe semi-public enjoyment of modern entertainment, witb buffets of Chinese, Mugblai and continental food an afterthought to tbe fashionable productions.''^ Tbe adaptation of Western modes of entertainment was unsubtle, witb performers donning Englisb names for tbeir scbeduled productions: tbe Asboka Club boasted "Ged Robert's lively band,'"*"* tbe Ansara Restaurant in tbe Hotel Alka bad Punky, Betty, Lydia and Clyde perform at its luncbes,''^ and tbe similar Asbna restaurant at tbe Hotel Ambassador set its dance sbows to "music by Pat Blake witb Adrian.'"*^ If Delbiites found few new opportunities for casual restaurants in tbe city, they could avail themselves of an increasingly diverse and permissible array of street offerings. Amitav Gbosb recalls eating at Tibetan refugee-run dumpling stalls during bis college years at Delbi's St. Stepben's College. T b e refugees, be recounts, served mo-mo [dumplings], noodles and chhang, tbe milky Tibetan rice beer, on tables tbey bad knocked togetber out of discarded crates. Tbeir food was very popular among tbe drivers wbo frequented tbat part of tbe Grand Trunk Road. [In] tbe university, it was sometbing of a ritual to go to tbese sbacks after an examination.''" If tbe introduction of restaurant culture in Delbi during tbe middle decades of tbe twentietb century were limited to a restricted set of diners, and tbe city's culinary landscape diverged to tbe poles of dhahas [street stalls, lit.
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"box"] and restaurants, the attitudinal changes that accompanied these shifts set the stage for the core changes to Delhi's puhlic eating culture. In the breakdown of food tahoo and the reimagination of puhlic spaces in a changing Delhi, these restaurants and stalls provided models for a new puhlic eating ethos that Delhi's growing middle class would embrace in the
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decades that followed.

A Widening Pursuit: Liberalization and the Rise of Mass Eating Culture The beginning of the 1990s saw a capital city transformed. An influx of cash and the resulting congregation of migrants meant that Delhi "emerged as India's 'New Boom Town,' becoming 'the epicenter of India's economic modernization,""'^ Delhi reveled in a newfound sense of cosmopolitanism, and with almost 70 percent of its denizens migrants to the city,"*^ a mix of capahility and desire worked together to render sit-down restaurants a category of normative public interaction. The diversity of tastes and increasing attention to food itself suggests that eating has become an important construct of pleasure for the majority of the city's residents, while its elite enjoy widening access to "restaurants named Diva and Ploof [and] French brandy snifters,"^** as Kiran Desai has noted. The embrace of the idea of public eating, with both its aesthetic and social connotations, demonstrates itself over the past twenty years through increasingly available restaurants, a widening of tastes and food choices, and the emergence of a didactic restaurant culture in the city's popular media. By 1998, major change had come to Delhi's culinary landscape. One domestically-produced guidebook opined that only recently had phrases like Fettuccine Verde, Quiche Lorraine and Spaghetti Bolognaise start tripping off the dillhvala's tongue ,,, Major international fast food chains [are finding] a large clientele in Delhi, although the desi eateries next door serving spicy chaat and msala dosa with equal efficiency are just as busy, Delhi's children are as passionate about chaat as they are about Chinese noodles and hurgers, ^' Lalit Nirula, heir to the Nirula chain, suggests that the idea of "eating out" gained credence with the shortage of domestic labor and increase in the number of working couples that came with the economic boom, combined with cultural liheralization that rendered the practice a fashionable category of Western life,^^ The introduction and subsequent popularity of chain restaurants in Delhi testifies to the growing market for accessible dining options throughout the
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1990s, with most chains offering sit-down dining experiences with waiters and menus. The arrival of a beefless McDonald's in one of Delhi's southern shopping centers in 1996 added a sense of international approval to the city's food scene: Domino's, Wimpy Pizza Hut, Subway and others would soon follow suit, while local chains like Nirula's Hot Shoppe and Haldiram's also
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flourished. The popular snack foods of South India, introduced in hotel restaurants in the 1970s, found increased attention and formal service with the introduction of the Sagar Ratna chain. Sagar Ratna's founder, Jayaram Banam, became a quiek millionaire, but by the middle of the decade was living with bodyguards in constant fear of kidnappinghis restaurants' unparalleled success had made him the object of perpetual extortion.^^ Concurrent with the culture of increased access to restaurants has come an influx of foreign ehefs catering to wealthy citizens; their efforts to adapt to local aesthetics has often resulted in frustration with customers who order "the puree of morels, fondant potatoes and garlic with which snails are servedwithout the snails." O n e Italian chef arriving in Delhi, "who had always treated chicken with disdain, had to eat humble pie the moment he arrived in Delhi and was told it was a categorical imperative for Punjabis to eat the bird."^"* Delhi's flowering restaurant scene in the last decade has brought with it a didactic restaurant review culture, spearheaded by the Hindustan Times and the Times of India. T h e HT City Guide to Eating Out in Delhi and the Times Food Guide list and review restaurants, but equally significantly, teach an increasingly prosperous city how and where to eat in a set of variable and changing urban contexts. The annual publicationsthe HT City Guide began publication in 2003have expanded to include more than a thousand listings in dozens of different categories in their latest iterations;^^ the increasing diversity of cuisines represented in eaeh successive year speaks to an expanding expectation of culinary cosmopolitanism and the widening of outlets for its expression. Beyond their pun-laden and often vituperative reviews, the publications serve as instructional manuals of sorts for Delhi's upwardly mobile populations. Each year's edition is prefaced with a descriptive tutorial on the types of eateries available and under what circumstances they should be patronized. T h e reader is not presumed to be a culinary naif, but neither is he presumed to be familiar with the full spectrum of conventions for eating and its aecordant sociability. "If you're out on a first date," one year's introduction instructs, "you'll want to choose a place where the dcor merits an 8 or above. Cenerally a 5 or below for dcor means the kind of place you won't want to take your mother."^*' These same introduetions speak explicitly to the billowing of public eating options in Delhi, yet remain self-eonsciously aware of what is perceived as a still-nascent restaurant culture, deriding both culinary "inauthenticity " and
84 :: Benjamin Siegel

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indifferent service. "Never ask restaurant/dhaba staff what their best dish is," warns one introduction. "We're still light years away from that culture."^^ Other publications speak to a population accustomed to restaurant eulture abroad, their listings drawing implicit and explicit comparisons to foreign restaurants and uncommon cuisines: the one-time Today 00: Delhi's Best Restaurants and Cafes was released with a ceremonial cloche raised by India's tourism minister in 2005,^^ while Time Out Neiv Delhi's understated reviews draw upon the cosmopolitan expectations of the international publication. For their differences in demographics, however, these publications similarly chronicle the cross-class rise of expectations of public sociability at restaurants, eafes, andwith several publications including nightlife listingspubs. For an older generation of Delhiites, however, the rise of a showy restaurant culture in the wake of courtly Delhi's demise has tinged the changes to the capital's culinary landscape with deep nostalgia. "Today Dillmalas are a minority in their own eity," writes Delhi actress and socialite Sadia Delhvi; "butter chicken and dal makhani [Punjabi butter lentils] are the 'delicacies' associated with Delhi. It breaks my heart to see my son relishing burgers, for he will never know the glorious traditions of food which are now memories of the past."^^ A now-disappearing generation of citizens recalls an identity lost as "eating out in restaurants and hotels became acceptable; the cigarette pushed the hookah into obscurity [and] sherbet [traditional iced fruit drink] ar\d falooda [rose syrup drink] gave way to soda lemonade."^'' If younger Delhiites reject that nostalgia, there is nonetheless a measurable winnowing of traditional foodways in the city: a 2007 Supreme Court decision banned in total the cooking of food on Delhi streets, permitting only licensed vendors to continue operations on zoned pavilions.''' The decision seems unlikely to eurtail the 300,000 estimated food vendors in the city, but the banciting questionable sanitation and widespread encroachment upon public thoroughfaresspeaks to a culture of increased culinar)' fixity in Delhi, even in the wake of a diversifying array of cuisines and dining outlets. The attempt to sanitize and systematize street vendors' operations appears to reflect a discomfort with foodways that are seen as incompatible with the city's increasing cosmopolitanism, and out of place in a newly influential Asian eapital. While street stalls, chaat houses and kebab houses are not substantively endangered, the shifting boundaries of Delhi's gastronomic expectations suggest that they will occupy ever less important places in the city's culinary imagination.

Conclusions
Delhi's contemporary culinar)' landscape showcases an eager population increasingly versed in the expectations of restaurant eating. Alongside
Learning (o Eat in a Capital City :: 8 5

Mughlai and Punjabi restaurants, Indo-Cbinese eateries, and Soutbern snack food outlets, an expanding middle class can cboose from a billowing selection of Italian and Thai restaurants or Western fast food chains. More modest neigbborboods burst witb restaurants offering wbat is increasingly seen as "pan-Indian cuisine," a mix of vegetarian and non-vegetarian Punjabi
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Standards, Soutbern tiffin snacks. Western-style sandwicbes and cutlets, and Indo-Cbinese standardsincreasingly, these restaurants offer printed menus and cleaner facilities, Delbi's posh southern neighborboods tout more upscale offerings, with Japanese restaurants and coffeehouses like the local Barista and Caf Coffee Day chains working in tandem with several popular "dial-a-meal " s e m c e s , Delhi's hotel restaurants remain popular among wellheeled locals and tourists alike, their offerings increasingly sophisticated: the twin giants of Bukhara and Dum Pukht are often seen as the world's best Indian restaurants, wbile House of Ming, in spite of the derisory local moniker House of Singh, offers a sophisticated Chinese menu. Food, for Delhiites across the class spectrum, constitutes the primary locus tbrougb which to explore the ethnic Other, both domestic and foreign, India's adaptations of foreign cuisine are growing ever-more refined: if its fast food chains and syncbretic Indo-Chinese cuisine are still the hallmark of most restaurants, tbere is an increasing desire for "authenticity" in imported cuisine, with returning non-resident Indians (NRls) and the experienced voices of internationally-oriented restaurant reviewers defining new expectations for their peers and audiences respectively Delhi's embrace of domestic cuisines still evidences crude culinary reificationsas Arjun Appadurai suggests: Soutb Indians are said to eat (and enjoy) excessively runny food tbat trickles down tbeir arms to tbe elbows, Cujaratis are said to eat "sickeningly sweet" food, Punjabi food is said to be beavy and greasy, Telugu food to be inedibly bot, [and] Bengali food to be smotbered in pungent mustard oil,''^ Dilli Haat, a planed craft and food market popular with tourists and middle class locals alike, boasts one outdoor food stall for eacb state in tbe countr)', with bigbly reified cuisines for eacb (Indo-Cbinese proves paradoxically popular at almost ever)' stall). Yet wbile cbaracterizations persist, Delbiites bave grown increasingly savvy about tbe quality of tbeir domestic ethnic foods, and more frequently find reasons to seek it out, particularly around "etbnic" holidays: the Puja festival season in tbe fall sees dilliwallahs eager to eat Bengali food for tbeir distinct festival cuisine,^^-^ Upscale restaurants celebrating domestic etbnic cuisines, botb traditional and creativelike tbe posb Punjabi by Nature and Oh, Calcutta! in South Delbispeak to a discerning elite eager to embrace a new, domestic cosmopolitanism tbat goes beyond traditional Soutb Indian
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favorites. Tbere is also a certain irony in tbe begemonic rise of "Delbi" cuisine in restaurants across Indiatbe city's idiosyncratic bodgepodge of united provinces and frontier food cooked to tbe tastes of Punjabi migrants emerging as a standard-bearer in middle class restaurants across tbe nation. Tbis distinct menu, borne of post-Partition demograpbic shift amid a backdrop of culinary conservatism, seems to bave been constitutive of an imagined national cuisineowing mucb to tbe migrants and travelers wbo, in turn, bave exported it from tbe wealtby capital to tbe rest of tbe countr)'. Tbe transformation of Delbi's public eating culture demonstrates a broader range of sociocultural and economic sbifts in tbe capital city Delbi was slow, tbougb ultimately eager, to disregard tbe food taboos tbat bad bindered its culinaiy growtb. Western urban structure and an increasing awareness of global cosmopolitanism began to provide aspirational and social models for public eating, facilitated by imperial planning, foreign travelers, and tbe increasing prosperity of returning NRls. Tbe resultant food culture in Delbi tbat blossomed as tbe stagnating "Hindu Rate of Growtb" broke in tbe 1990s proved a key means for Indians to safely experience tbe culinary Otber, wbile embodying values of taste, urbanity and wealtb. Delbi's embrace of restaurant culture, of course, bas not been accompanied by universal satiety, and tbe estimated 5,000 individuals fed by soup kitcbens in tbe capital certainly represent a fraction of tbose wbo still go witbout food, or witb nutritionally inadequate food.^'' But in an increasingly prosperous city, tbe scope of Delbi's eating public bas continued to broaden. Delbi's experience differs significantly from tbat of Bombay: tbe capital city's bistoric conservatism rendered it far less able to adopt tbe restaurant culture tbat developed in Bombay, wbere port liberality, etbnic intermixing, and relatively freer class mobility allowed for an earlier embrace of public eating. It was only in tbe 1990s, as Delbi's economy began to match and even surpass tbat of Bombay, tbat tbe two cities offered similar opportunities for tbe public expression of culinary cosmopolitanism. Similarly, wbereas Calcutta's distinct forms of sociality meant tbat restaurant culture was quick to take off, notions of public eating and commensality were slower to cbange in a city long stymied by food taboo and imperial conservatism. Tbe roles of tbe imperial agent, foreign tourist, and returning Indian bave all been critical influences in tbe capital's transformation. Britisb planning of a new city designed for tbe practices of Western modernity resulted in tbe first formal restaurants in tbe capital, buoyed by Britisb and American soldiers wbo ser\'ed as tbeir first customers. Botb foreigners and wealtby Indians patronized tbe city's expensive botel restaurants, wbicb, wbile elite venues, demonstrated to a larger audience means of consuming appropriately in a modernizing city In tbe last quarter-century, cultural and economic liberalization bave allowed for tbe establisbment and expansion of Western sit-down restaurants, spearbeaded by foreigners and returning
Learning to Eat in a Capital City ;: Sj

NRls with expectations of a certain urban modernity, and eagerly welcomed by a city that had discarded much of its historic reser\'ation. The implications of the reconstruction of a private practice into a public one speak to the changing modernity of urban India in its distinct North Indian contexts, and while Delhi's restaurant culture draws deeply from models of Western urban life and cosmopolitanism, its distinct aspects of culinary exploration and adaptation suggest an indigenous modernity, the contours of which are still heing negotiated. Yet for many of Delhi's 14 million residents, the culture of public eating has been radically transformed, and the rise of a vibrant, distinct, and increasingly widespread restaurant culture is evidence of a once-conservative city that is, through modeling, adaptation and transformation, learningand teaching othershow to eat.

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Acknowledgments The author wishes to acknowledge Barney Bate, Christine CrawfordOppenheimer, Michael Dove, Ramachandra Guha, Mridu Bai, Rich Richie, Nilanjana Roy and James Scott for their substantive assistance to this project; its omissions and oversights are the author's alone. The participants of Harvard's South Asia Across Disciplines workshop, Tariq Omar Ali and Johan Mathew in particular, were instructive in their critiques. Much of this work was undertaken with generous funding from Yale University's Fox International Fellowship and the Tristan Perlroth Prize; particular thanks are due to the Fox family, the Perlroth family, Larisa Satara and Tara Stephens. Personal gratitude is due to Adrien Carpentier, Becky Chang, Bhrampal Cilar, Jack and Joyce Cohen, Lizzie Elston, Eve Fine, Bjorn Fredrickson, Nachy Kanfer, Creg Phelan, David, Sharon and Joshua Siegel, and Sid and Naomi Siegel,

Notes 1 Chitrita Banerji, Eating India: Exploring a Nation's Cuisine (New Delhi; Penguin Books India, 2007), p, 135, z For further discussion of Hindu foodways, see K, T, Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion (New Delhi: O,xford University Press, 1994); Arjun Appadurai, "Gastropolitics in South Asia," American Ethnologist 8 (1983), pp, 494-511; Indira Chakravarty, Saga of Indian Food: A Historical and Cultural Sttrvcj (New Delhi: Sterling Puhlishers, 1972); and R, S, Khare, The Hindu Hearth and Home (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1976), 3 Arjun Appadurai, "How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India, " Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 ( 1988), p, 18, 4 Frank Conlon, "Dining Out in Bomhay," in Arjun Appadurai and Carol Breckenridge (eds) Consuming Modernity: Public Culture in a South Asian World (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), pp, 99-103, 5 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp, 203-4, 88 :: Benjamin Siegel

6 Babur, Bahiir Naina, trans. Annette Susannah Beveridge (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006), p. 275. 7 Conion, "Dining Out in Bombay," p. 92. 8 For a discussion of vvomens private eating habits in Mughal Delhi, see Ruby Lai, Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World: Historicizing The Haravi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 9 Several strong discussions of British dining habits in Delhi e.xist in William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall ofa Dynasty, Delhi, /8S7 (Penguin Books India: New Delhi, 2007). A more general discussion of British dining habits in India ean be found in Lizzie Collingham, Curry: A Tale ofCooliS and Conquerors (O.vford: O.xford University Press, 2006) or in E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical E.xperieiice of the Raj, c. 800-1947 (Cambridge: Polity, 2001). 10 Franois Bernier, "Food Products," in H. K. Kaul (ed.) Historic Delhi: An Anthology (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 158. 11 Kiran Desai, "On the Roof," Courinet (April 2007), p. 84. li Franeis Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, A.D. 656 668 (New Delhi: Low Price, 1989), p. 252, cited in Jyoti Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 31. 13 Dalr)'mple, 'Tlie Last Mughal, pp. 107-8. 14 Dalrymple, The Last Mughal, p. 214. 15 For one perspective on the intersections of food, anxiety, rumor and contamination in the contexts of northern India during the events of 1857, see Homi Bhabha, "By Bread Alone," in 'tlie Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 212-35. 16 F. H. S. Merewether, "The Public Kitchen," in H. K. Kaul (ed.) Historic Jelhi: An Anthology (Delhi: O.xford University Press, 1985), p. 161. 17 Jyoti Hoshraghar notes in "Mansions to Margins: Modernity and the Domestic Landscapes of Historic Delhi, 1847-1910," The journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60 (2001), p. 37, that these havelis were stoeked with cutlery and fine china, while street eating relied upon fingers and pattar [leaf plates]. 18 Jyoti Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Arcliitectiire and Urhanisiii (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 147. 19 Eugene B. Vest, "Native Words Learned by American Soldiers in India and Burma in World War U," American Speech 23 (1948), p. 223. 20 Ranjana Sengupta, Delhi Metropolitan: The Making of an Unlikely City (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2007), p. 223. 21 Sengupta, Dei/i; Metropolitan, p. 225. 22 Jasleen Dhamija, "Of People and Plaees," Seminar 515 (2002), pp. 45-51. 23 Dhamija, "Of People and Places". 24 Fodors Cuide to ndia (New York: Fodors Travel Cuides, 1962), p. 239. 25 H. D. Malaviya, Socialist Congressman 3 (19634), p. 6. 26 Ashis Nandy, "Ethnic Cuisine: The Significant 'Other" in Ceeti Sen (ed.) ndia: A National Culture? (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003), p. 247. 27 Sengupta, Delhi Metropolitan, pp. 2234. 28 Caylord Menu. New Delhi, c. 1965. 29 Mahinder ID. Chaudhr)' and Bert F. Hoselitz, "State Income of Delhi State, 195152 and \955-56," Economic Development and Cultural Change 11, No. 3 Part 2 (April 1963), p. 104. 30 Ashoka Hotel Menu. New Delhi, 1963. 31 Imperial Flotel Menu. New Delhi, c. 1960.

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Learning to Eat in ii Capital City :: 89

32 s. c . Gogia and K. N. Malhotra (eds), Hotel Des India: A Traveller's Cuide (New Delhi: Hardy and Ally, c. 1964), p. 21. 33 Sengupta, Delhi Metropolitan, p. 225. 34 Gogia and Malhotra, Hotel Des India. 35 Gogia and Malhotra, Hotel Des India. 36 Gogia and Malhotra, Hotel Des india. 37 Madhurjaffrey, World of the East Vegetarian Cooking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), p. 86. 38 Dhamija, "Of People and Places. ' 39 Gogia and Malhotra, Hotel Des India. 40 Advertisement for Woodlands at the Lodhi Hotel, Times of India (Delhi Edition) (October 8, 1972). 41 Fodor's Cuide lo India 976/7 (New York: Fodor's Travel Guides, 1976), p. 199. 42 Advertisement for the Gaylord Restaurant, Times of India (Delhi Edition) (Octoher 7, 1972). 43 Advertisement for the Samrat Restaurant at the Hotel Vikram, Times of India (Delhi Edition) (Octoher 9, 1972). 44 Advertisement for the Supper Glub at the Ashoka, Times of India (Delhi Edition) ( 1972). 45 Ansara Restaurant, Hotel Alka, Times of India (Delhi Edition) (Octoher 28, 1972). 46 Advertisement for the Ashna at the Hotel Ambassador, Times of India (Delhi Edition) (October 1972). 47Amitav Ghosh, "Tibetan Dinner," in Nilanjana S. Roy (ed.) The Penguin Book of Indian Writing on Food (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2004), p. 79. 48 Paolo Favero. "Phantasms in a Starr)' Place: Space and Identification in a Gentral New Delhi Market," Cidtiiral Anthropology 18 (2003), p. 559. 49 Favero, "Phantasms in a 'Starry' Place," p. 559. 50 Kiran Desai, "On the Roof," Courmet (April 2007), p. 82. 51 Swati Mitra (ed.) Eicher City Cide: Delhi (New Delhi: Eicher Goodearth Ltd., 1998), p. 53. 52 Lalit Nirula, speech on Indian dining habits and histor)' (January 28, 1999), cited in Sengupta, Delhi Metropolitan, p. 228. 53 Sayantan Ghakravarty, Samar Halarnkar and Smruti Koppikar, "Fear in the Gity," India Today (October 6, 1992), p. 26. 54 "Foreign Chefs: Sweet and Sour Servings, India Today (6 October 1997), p. 70. 55 Sabina Sehgal Saikia, ed.. Times Food Cuide 2007 (New Delhi: Bennett, Goleman and Go., Ltd., 2007). 56 Mar)'am Reshi (ed.) HT City Cuide lo Eating Out in Delhi 2003 (New Delhi: HT Media Ltd., 2003), p. iv. 57 Reshi, HT City Cuide to Eating Out in Delhi 2003, p. iv 58 Today 100: Delhi's Best Restaurants and Cafes 2005 (New Delhi: The India Today Group, 2005). 59 Sadia Delhvi, "Dilli Ka Dastarkhwan," in Khushwant Singh (ed.) City bnprohable: An Anthology of Writings on Delhi (New York: Viking, 2001), p. 167. 60 Satish Jacob, "Wither, the Walled Gity," Seminar 5 I 5 (2002), pp. 26-30. 61 Anna Da Gosta, "Last Days of the Ba/.aar?" Ecologist 37 (2007), p. 50. 62 Appadurai, "Gastropolitics in South Asia," p. 18. 63 Rahul Verma, "Pet Puja," Time Out New Delhi (Octoher 5-18, 2007), p. 39. 64 "Delhi Soup Kitchens Keep Flunger at Bay," ndo-Asian News Sence (December 3 1, 2008). l-ood. ^ Society

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